Adapting directly from overrated modern source materials is what's bringing down comics films

Inverse recently argued that direct reliance on certain source material for making a comics adaptation has only hindered such films, with Supergirl being the latest casualty:

In the early days, these movies were far more willing to bend comic book lore to the will of the screenwriter and director – the original Blade screenplay from David S. Goyer, rewrote the character’s origins — created by Marv Wolfman — to be set in America instead of London, a change that quickly made its way to the page, and many other superhero films took their own liberties with the source material as well. But now that the genre has become one of the most prevalent in Hollywood, these franchises have started plumbing the depths of canon with more intentionality, directly adapting iconic storylines and using that sense of “accuracy” as a key part of the marketing…a strategy that has earned mixed results. In the case of this year’s Supergirl, a movie currently being met with middling reviews and a disappointing start to its box office run, part of the criticism has been a lack of fidelity to the Woman of Tomorrow storyline that it’s predominantly based on. But here’s the thing: This criticism could’ve been avoided wholesale if the DCU hadn’t made that adaptational choice such a major factor in the writing and promotion of the movie.

I would just like to note that Goyer's a very overrated writer himself, and I'm not forgetting the time he made repellent remarks about She-Hulk over a decade ago, and the story where he depicted Superman throwing out his USA citizenship. Goyer may have proven a worse comics writer than a movie writer. With that noted, there's certainly an interesting point made here that decades ago, filmmakers had the creative license to build a story that stood on its own, wasn't based directly on any particular story or back issue, but drew certain ideas seen in the stories for developing a screenplay. Now, in an era where creative freedom's been all but taken away, they're almost literally obligated to adapt overrated modern miniseries that most film critics aren't willing to admit was hardly worth the effort compared to the films, and that is problematic.

And if there's a flaw in this article so far that needs to be addressed, it's that Blade first debuted in 1972-79's Tomb of Dracula series, becoming an ally to the main vampire hunting protagonists (Quincy Harker, Rachel van Helsing, et al). That series was set in the UK, and Blade did not have any kind of series at that time; he just made guest appearances in various series up to the early 90s, and if he got a series by that time, it may have been published under a brief imprint called Midnight Sons. So you know that Inverse's writers are again proving to make insufficient effort to do the math and connect the dots. Mainly because they perpetuate the sugarcoating of Tom King's miniseries, along with another error:

While there are quite a few other problems the film faces, it’s hard to ignore that its narrative issues stem from the decision to straightforwardly adapt Woman of Tomorrow in the first place. And at first glance, that seems like a strange takeaway – it’s a critically acclaimed storyline, and for years comic book fans have wanted to see films adapt iconic story arcs more directly. However, there’s a reason Woman of Tomorrow works on the page in a way the filmed version never could: it’s a story that operates as a deconstruction of Kara Zor-El and the unwavering optimism she has represented throughout her existence as a character. Exploring her buried grief regarding the destruction of her homeworld and her refusal to end a life takes on a new significance because she’s spent over 60 years of real-time storytelling suppressing her pain and upholding her golden rule – directly adapting WoT as Kara’s first DCU outing misses the metatextual nature of why the book works within the decades-long lineage of Supergirl as a comic book character.

That’s not to mention the ways in which the film outright changes certain elements of the story. In the book Krem is a despicable mass-murderer, but the fact that Ruthye and Supergirl banish him to the Phantom Zone instead of ending him forces him to reckon with his own failings as a human being and grow to feel genuine remorse for his crimes – making him a slaver and a trafficker almost demands he meet his end because a moviegoing audience truthfully just has a different tolerance for that kind of debauchery. Kara slaying him by the end fits a character who’s evil in a nastier way, but it also compromises the original intent of a story that’s ultimately about Kara and Ruthye preserving their own innocence and refusing to beat Krem in a way that validates his violent worldview.

So they're saying "deconstruction" is entirely acceptable? Sigh. Another serious mistake, right down to how they claim fandom wants to see more direct adaptations of anything. It all depends, and besides, whenever DC and Marvel produced miniseries past the early 2000s, they were some of the worst tales ever to litter the landscape. Also, I seem to recall that, when Batman caused the Joker to fall to his death from a helicopter in the 1989 film, that was done without any moralizing coming before or after. Even Superman 2 from 1980 didn't seem to do anything like that. Even the 1st Spider-Man movie from 2002 depicted the burglar who murdered Ben Parker falling to his death after Peter injured his hand to disarm him of the handgun. So if the new Supergirl film does wallow in heavy handed moralizing over whether to kill a repulsive villain, and ends with the Maid of Might jettisoning her earlier stance, isn't that another mistake in-screenplay?

Also, where do they get the idea a movie audience is more open to the idea of superheroes obliterating the worst of criminals, or that a comics audience isn't? All that does is suggest, on the one hand, that either/both are absurdly hypocritical, and it only makes for a more divisive situation.

Anyway, John Nolte at Breitbart's spoken about how the Supergirl film's sunk big time in 2 weeks:

Between production and promotion, Warner Bros. sunk around $250 million into Supergirl, which puts the break-even number at around $450 million, which means we’re looking at losses in the hundred million range, not to mention the damage done to the overall DC brand.

James Gunn’s Superman was not a very good movie, but it was good enough, good enough that people were willing to see what came next from his rebooted DC Universe. Supergirl is a drain on the one thing a successful franchise requires, and that’s goodwill. Next up, later this year from DC, is something called Clayface, which no one asked for.

We’ll see.

No, we won't. The spotlight on villains got out of hand in its own way, and it's a poor example of what to emphasize. Interesting there's no news so far that they may want to adapt characters like the Silver Age Atom to the silver screen, because that in itself could have clever potential, as could possibly a shape-shifter like Metamorpho. But under overrated filmmakers like Gunn, it's always possible such possibilities for adaptations could be as totally botched as the Supergirl film. Also, I don't think in the original comics, Superman and Supergirl had to be within the range of a yellow sun solar system proper in order for their powers to work. It's just that when within the confines of a red sun system, their powers were nullified, and I think there were times when red solar radiation was used as a plot point in at least a few pre-Crisis Superman stories as a way to portray a weakness in sci-fi terms without his being in a red sun system proper. One more reason this new live action movie is clearly theater of the absurd.

And in the end, once again, it's a terrible shame Supergirl's been subjected to such injustices and indignities as a comics creation, along with a movie adaptation. The sad result of only so much corporate neglect and mismanagement. But who knows if the box office receipts will convince the studios to allow screenwriters and directors more creative license to build a story they think is worthwhile? Even then, it'd require creatives who aren't heavy handed ideologues, and they're sadly in short supply in modern Hollywood.

Frank Miller makes the mistake of defending Neil Gaiman

Veteran leftist artist Miller was interviewed by the UK Telegraph at the Fastnet Film Festival in Ireland, and he still can't keep himself from pushing all the wrong buttons. First:

It’s hard to overstate Frank Miller’s cultural impact over the past four decades. It was Miller, the artist and writer behind The Dark Knight Returns, 300 and Sin City, who redefined comics from kids’ stuff into something darker and more adult – noirish, dystopian and morally ambiguous. Without Miller, Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan’s Batman films wouldn’t exist; without Miller, the whole movie superhero phenomenon might never have happened at all.

And I guess Denny O'Neil, Steve Englehart and Chuck Dixon don't matter, huh? Only Miller; how nice to know only so many other decent Batman writers don't count the tiniest bit. Predictably, no objective view of "something darker" and "morally ambiguous", as though that's totally above criticism. As for Miller himself, what matters to him? Left-wing "causes":

Still, he’d take that New York, “for all its despair and menace and its degradation”, he tells me, over the one that exists now. The city “in those dark Seventies”, he says, had a spirit of defiance, “a sense of shared safety and, well, there’s no other word for it, love. I don’t believe it does now. We have a militarised police, those horrific ICE agents are nothing less than a Gestapo, and the city itself has been so mismanaged for so long. As scary and grim as things were in the Seventies, there was not the overall stink of totalitarianism that there is throughout America today.”

Is the incumbent president an archetypally corrupt, money-grabbing Frank Miller political villain? “He’s grotesque,” Miller spits, comparing Donald Trump to Darth Vader without his mask. He invokes the characters that the co-creator of Captain America, Jack Kirby, conjured when the Nazis were rampaging across Europe. “Kirby several times recreated Adolf Hitler as a comic-book character. One of them was named Hate-Monger, and that one certainly applies to Trump, because he spews hatred, and he calls on that part of the human spirit in his rhetoric, and you see it on the faces of his followers – the naked racism, the naked sexism, the belligerence.”

It's so sad Miller continues to spew hatred at Trump for all the wrong reasons, and all without clearly backing up his complaints with concrete evidence. And all the while, Miller turns a deaf ear and blind eye to the Iranian ayatollahs, who preached what he speaks of, and Miller's ignorance only dampens whatever impact he must want his GNs to have. That Miller also attacks ICE and refuses, much like his other leftist colleagues he doesn't have the courage to distance himself from, to consider what heinous crimes any illegal immigrants have committed within the USA's borders. The really sad thing is that, if we take Mark Levin's criticisms as an example, there are valid issues one can make when it comes to Trump's managements, yet Miller acts oblivious to all of that. So again, if Miller believes Sin City's a masterpiece, why does he make it look like a joke as a result of his far-left stances? There's also quite a goof in this Telegraph article:

Those early days were exciting. New influences were flowing into Manhattan via the first Forbidden Planet comic-book store, where Miller mainlined the work of Japanese and European masters. His first creator-owned work, Ronin (1983-1984), was a sci-fi samurai mash-up set in contemporary New York that incorporated a wild mix of influences, with manga writ large. Some complain of cultural appropriation in borrowing from other traditions. Miller says, “I welcome any such activity. America is an amalgam of cultures… If we could, I’d love us to learn from Martians.”

Umm, doesn't contemporary mean "modern"? I read Ronin years ago, and putting aside for now that it was overrated, I seem to recall it was set in a future time. Maybe not that far into the future, but it was set years ahead all the same. Gee, what a stupid typo they put to use there. Surprising though, that Miller upheld drawing from foreign cultures, considering how limp his positions are on any subjects involving serious issues like what Sin City may be about. Unfortunately, that's about as far as he may go by now in defense of anything creative and challenging.

There’s a humorous, upbeat quality to Miller that belies the sometimes Stygian darkness of his work. His physical trials – his neck is bent by an undisclosed condition into a position that is visibly limiting – do not daunt him; he declares himself “reborn” as an artist, rather than compromised by his posture. He draws with dramatic vigour, using techniques that embrace the unpredictable. Blood spatters across his pages. Miller achieves the effect by dipping a toothbrush into ink and pulling back the bristles with his thumb to send droplets flying across his creations.

And we're supposed to be utterly impressed and thrilled by his use of bloodletting? What's so "unpredictable" about that? It's actually been quite a cliche for goodness knows how long. That aside, here's what they say about certain other parts of the content:

In Sin City (1991), the men are staggeringly brutal and the women are almost all sex workers. “As far as misogyny goes,” Miller says, “I laugh about it because all you have to do is just read my work. [The accusations] might be because I draw the women as attractive, but in Daredevil, for instance, who’s the most powerful character you remember? It’s Elektra… When it comes to Sin City, yes, I draw the women to be as sexy as possible, but they have their own neighbourhood that they police by themselves. They’re a pack of Amazons.” He is, he insists, not the least bit misogynistic himself.

He’s been accused of Islamophobia, too, after penning Holy Terror in 2011, a graphic novel that he writes “was created in a bloodthirsty rage” after the attacks on New York City on September 11. He had originally conceived it as a story in which Batman simply “kicks Al-Qaeda’s ass”, but instead it “sparked a fire of criticism, some of it warranted”. “It was a howl of pain and rage, and an inarticulate one. I’ll just leave it at that,” he tells me.

On the subject of how he draws women, yes, it's quite possible PC advocates over the years attacked him just for that, but apparently not for the violent content he's decidedly notorious for drawing in the Sin City series. As for the Holy Terror GN, again, it's regrettable he first decided to say 8 years ago that he regrets it, because for somebody who claims he's not a misogynist, he's letting a religious ideology wallowing in just that off the hook. It may have been "inarticulate", but that's surely because he never studied anything about Islam and didn't defend his work based on that. Making matters worse, the same guy who says he's not a misogynist then goes on to defend another writer who was accused of just that:

Generally, Miller is not interested in slanging matches. He says that it would please the media if “I spent half an interview” talking about the embattled writer Neil Gaiman – accused in 2024 of sexual assault by multiple women, which Gaiman denies – “saying, ‘He’s not just a terrible writer, he’s a bad person.’ You know, something crazy like that, when he’s a lovely person, he’s a terrific writer.”

Oh good grief, does he realize he's giving serious detractors a statement to use against him? The same artist and writer who said earlier he's not a misogynist destroys his defense by acting as an apologist for a man who turned out to be scummy. Is Miller doing this because he's worried his recent documentary, American Genius, will suffer in sales due to Gaiman's contributions to it? Well that's partly Miller's fault, as he probably didn't think to vet most of the people who chipped in while preparing the production.

Now the memoir is done, he’s writing a story for the 1,000th issue of Spider-Man in September. Does he still feel affection for those old characters? “Oh God, yes,” he says. “That’s the stuff I grew up on. I’m so fond of it.” And does he think the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been bad for print comics? “I don’t know how good it’s been for movies,” he says with a sly laugh.

What of the prospect of a real “superman” in the near future, as robots and AI continue to advance? “It’s not gonna be that,” he says. “AI is a false god… [and] it’s making for some bad writing.” Meanwhile, this thoroughly human creative engine is still thinking about what he wants to do next – Beowulf, perhaps. Or Der Ring des Nibelungen. “There are an awful lot of stories,” he says.

Well Miller's offering up some very bad commentary ensuring he won't be the most famous creator to come about in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. One of the worst things about modern comics movies is that they did come at the expense of the zygotes, and while Miller may claim to have affection for even Spidey, his failure to address the erasure of the Spider-marriage can speak volumes. It won't be shocking if the 1000th Spidey issue spoken of turns out to be heavily mandated, with C.B. Cebulski prohibiting a reinstatement of the marriage with Mary Jane Watson. So why tell us about the upcoming "anniversary" or even about his new memoir, Push the Wall? After this insult to the intellect from a guy who doesn't seem to understand the importance of consistency, I'd rather not waste my time on either. Miller's problem is that he simply won't keep his mouth shut, and recognize that obsessions like his with figures like Trump doesn't make him a realist. Miller's only proving he's one of the most disappointing artists in comicdom today, and then, if his recent projects were failures, we shouldn't be surprised why. With a few exceptions like Daredevil and maybe Batman: Year One, he is pretty overrated as an artist and writer. And his defense of Gaiman is very troubling.

Kingston's first game convention gives a role to Canadian comics creators

The Kingston Whig-Standard wrote about the first video game convention being held in the Ontario city, where even comics creators had a role:

Indie game developers, esports competitors, comic book creators, and pop-culture enthusiasts gathered at Slush Puppie Place this past weekend for the inaugural Eh! Game Expo.

The event was a three-day festival that organizers hope will become an annual event in Kingston. The expo featured esports competition, cosplay, trading card games, artists and exhibitors from across Ontario and Quebec.

The event also included the Fight for the Throne esports tournament, bringing competitive players together for games such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 and other fighting titles.

Among those showcasing their creative work was Chris Cochrane, a longtime musician and teacher who moved to Kingston nearly a decade ago. That’s when he decided to revisit a dream he first pursued as a young artist: creating comic books.

For Cochrane, founder of Kingston-based Machete Comics, the expo was more than a business opportunity. He saw it as evidence that a community centred on comics, gaming and fan culture is continuing to grow in Kingston.

“I knew that I wanted to do comic books,” Cochrane said. “I figured this is a trilogy in life. This is the third chapter in a trilogy.”

Well good luck to him on his productions. But, the guy unfortunately couldn't resist bringing up a political complaint:

Cochrane cited recent trade tensions and the rising cost of selling books in the United States as key factors in swaying his interest more heavily toward Canadian stories and local creators.

“Because of the tariffs, one of my comic books costs about 40 bucks in the U.S. now,” he said.

Oh good grief, can it really cost that much, tariffs or none? I thought those applied more to distribution and delivery than the list prices on the books themselves. It would seem some Canadians just aren't willing to take issue with their local government and what it's doing wrong, and the aforementioned Tom Grummett was one such person.

I think more Canadian storytelling can be a great thing, but they should seriously leave grudges with the USA and Trump out of this. The same can be said for the video games industry.

Insufficient reactions from industry insiders to the Andrew Farago scandal

I looked to see if any comics writers and artists responded to the reports of the disgraced Andrew Farago being arrested for invasion of privacy felonies. So far, I couldn't find many at all. One who did respond was Gail Simone, of all people, on Facebook: So she's claiming she only spoke with Farago briefly through the mail. But what if there was more correspondence? In any case, somebody as leftist as Simone sadly is doesn't qualify as "moral authority" on the subject that turned up in the past few weeks. Some of the positions Simone took in the past decade only render her "arguments" moot, one more reason it's a shame anybody follows her on social media.

If we were to also quote somebody else who responded to the above post, it's the onetime comics editor Peter Sanderson:

It’s now happened to me three times that a comics pro whom I knew ended up in a sexual scandal. That’s disturbing. I suppose that many sexual predators function by seeming normal in public while having unpleasant secret lives. But I will continue to assume that people are what they seem to be until and unless unpleasant facts emerge about them. How can we function in society otherwise?

One way is to speak about these things more openly, and make clear that partisan politics can't get in the way of being vigilant and making clear sexually abusive behavior is unacceptable. And it's vital to ponder that many predators and perverts can have double or multiple personalities to disguise their actions. Perhaps if we quizzed some people on their overall personal character, we might be able to figure out whether certain individuals are worth supporting or not.

One more we could add is Tess Fowler Guittirez, who said:

It should be recalled, however, that Fowler may have once made unsubstantiated accusations against another writer/artist, and that doesn't help matters either. Those who seize upon scandals like these for the sake of opportunism are not improving the situation.

If there's more creators out there, old and new, I have yet to find them. 2 of those I've found commenting so far certainly don't have the best records to prove they're being altruistic. And when the vast majority of creators don't say a word, what was the point of that "pledge" they took years ago?

Marvel turns out the latest modern swimsuit special

Following up on the revived swimsuit special of the past year, Marvel's now publishing one for 2026, and Flickering Myth's got preview pages, but again, there's signs this'll be anything but a celebration. For one thing, as AIPT notes:

Kicking things off is Daniel Kibblesmith and Alessandro Miracolo for “Beach Bashed,” featuring a beach party hosted by Namor. A great opening page shows off a ton of heroes enjoying a pool, including the Watcher. Kibblesmith gets plenty of nods to Marvel events and character relationships throughout the story, with a main focus on Namor’s attempt to find Sue Storm. It’s a light tale for sure, but one that ends in a way only Namor could pull off.

If memory serves, Kibblesmith's one of the SJWs they employed earlier, and while it may seem like he's now willing to abandon that kind of stance, there's still signs the artwork is uninspired and otherwise sexless, and they still rely on the panel format used in the 2 earlier specials. It reminds me that, while some of the artwork in the Winter Break Special was marginally better, that special was still undermined by how they kept interrupting the artwork pages with a "story" that took up at least 15 pages, leaving the overall special with barely 16 or 17 pages of winter-based illustrations of various Marvel cast members, considerably less than the original swimsuit specials had over 3 decades ago. And the drawing of Elektra in the Winter Break special was particularly dull.

So again, I'm not sure why they're keeping on with this now, as they fail, beyond contributions from artists like J. Scott Campbell for variant covers, to offer anything that's seriously impressive. It underscores how poor the art world's becoming these days, at least according to how the mainstream hires them. And what do they mean by Namor being the "only one who can pull it off"? Isn't that provided the writer actually does a good job? Something that's been terrible lacking for over 2 decades now.

What John Byrne has to say about his new X-Men: Elsewhen story

Before I begin, while I've made clear in the past that the Phoenix Saga is not one of my favorite storylines - not on its own anyway - I am aware that terrible SJW Heather Antos actually attacked Byrne over bizarre accusations that he's supposedly homophobic/transphobic, even though he was the creator of Alpha Flight's Northstar, and it was originally his intention to emphasize that Jean-Paul Beubier was homosexual. From what I can tell, Antos must've attacked Byrne more out of bizarre jealousy along with virtue-signaling, and she does seem to have embarrassed herself with her employers over that.

But with all that said, does that mean I have to like the Phoenix Saga, or even the premise of Byrne's new alternate continuity story? Of course not, and seriously, what he's written up today is, IMO, distasteful, based in part on my being a fan of Jean Grey, and would I be taking this position if I weren't a fan? Anyway, Byrne was interviewed by the NY Times (archive link), and here's what's brought up in discussion:

Now 76, Byrne has re-emerged with what he’s calling his swan song: “X-Men: Elsewhen,” an alternate reality hardcover which revisits the X-Men at the point where he left, without his former collaborators but with a big plot twist: Phoenix was not killed.

Viewed within the specific context, if Jean was rescued from the Shiar and brought back to Earth as though nothing happened, after she allegedly wiped out billions, is that in good taste? Hardly. That told, what comes up next in the main interview is eyebrow raising:

For readers who may not be well-versed in the long history of the X-Men, can you briefly talk about the controversy around the Phoenix character?

There had never been a case where a superhero created by Stan and Jack had been turned into a villain. And we did that. We had her go out and blow up a whole planet and destroy an entire alien race. [Then editor in chief] Jim Shooter knew this was coming, but for some reason he said, “She must be punished” — that Phoenix had to be taken to a “prison asteroid,” and horribly tortured for all eternity. I said, “I’d rather kill her.” So that’s what we ended up doing.

What?!? Shooter thought Jean should be tortured?!? As though it weren't bad enough he wouldn't lift a finger in defense of her dignity as a character based on how she was being forced into the role of a criminal/murderess, he thought it okay to put her in a position where she'd end up being tortured to the end of time? Well, I knew there were sadly some very serious downsides to Shooter's MO, and Secret Wars was surely just the icing on the cake. What I did know years ago was that one of the story proposals was to have Jean put in a position similar to an actual Phoenix, where she'd revive but then be destroyed again repeatedly. I'm not sure if that's what Byrne's alluding to, but let's be clear: I just didn't find the whole premise appealing, and when the lead up to where Jean would be obliterated told that she'd wiped out 2 billion residents of an alien solar system...that made me sick. What's more, this whole storyline itself kept getting dredged up again and again, with Chris Claremont writing something vaguely similar when he got a job writing Justice League in the 2000s. What's so special about a story where a decent woman's turned into a monstress, but not one where she spends time with a loving family or something like that? And then, look what bizarre, questionable comment Byrne makes next:

But later, after you stopped working on X-Men books, Jean was brought back. So is anything ever really at stake in mainstream comics?

When Mark Gruenwald, my friend and editor, died unexpectedly, I mentioned it on my website and the first response was, “Oh, that’s terrible. I hope he recovers.” I thought: Oh my God, we’ve trained fans to expect that no death is actually permanent, even in the real world!

But this wasn't the real world they were dealing with! This was science-fiction/fantasy! And the later 1988-98 Excalibur was one of the most surreal series of all in Marvel's output. Resurrection is part and parcel of science-fantasy whether Byrne likes it or not, and he acts like it's some kind of calamity if handled otherwise? I'm sorry, but no. Resurrection in science-fantasy is not the worst thing that could happen, and to restrict it even in the Marvel/DC universes, or single them out as though they alone aren't allowed to employ the concept is insulting to the intellect, and offensive. Why, if you know where to look, there's undoubtably stories about resurrection of fictional characters in science-fiction/fantasy that are very enjoyable, in otherwise good taste, and we're being lectured that it's somehow a crime? Good grief. And then, look who he says he enjoyed writing most:

Which of the characters is the most fun to write?

Cyclops was always my favorite X-Man, from when I first started reading the book. Wolverine, of course. I often say Wolverine is my fault because [when I came on] Chris told me that he intended to write him out of the book. I was Canadian at that time and said, “No way are you getting rid of the only Canadian!”

But Jean wasn't fun at all? Perhaps not even Storm, Kitty Pryde, Scarlet Witch, Lois Lane and Lana Lang when he later wrote and drew Superman, or even Wonder Girl and Big Barda? Byrne unfortunately had a questionable approach to women at the time, and that he had 3 or 4 of the leading ladies drawn with short hair in his stories was probably the beginning. I recall a Superman story where an alien from Apocalips named Sleez mind-controlled Barda and Superman, and put them in a bizarre fanfiction situation where a snuff filmmaker would record them in something like a porno flick. I once read that Jack Kirby disliked that story because he considered it an insult to his wife, whom Barda was meant as a tribute to (and IIRC, there was a scene where Superman implied she looked like glop?!?). Superman may not have fared much better in that tale, and it was decidedly a low point in Byrne's run. And again, it doesn't always seem like he had much affection for some of the women in his stories, not even Aurora in Alpha Flight. Honestly, in hindsight, some of that stuff comes across as quite ludicrous, and has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Is Byrne correct though, that Claremont wanted to jettison Wolvie? I don't know, but some history items tell that Claremont wanted to put Wolvie in the grave and revive him as a villain. You could reasonably ask there if Claremont really loved Logan as a character, and of course, whether he actually loved Jean too, considering where he took her in the late 70s as the X-Men writer.

When people talk about giants of the era you came up in, you and Frank Miller are often on similar footing. Thoughts about his treatment of Wolverine?

This will get me in trouble, but I didn’t care much for Frank’s Wolverine. In terms of creating a hugely popular character, he did the right thing. My gut reaction was: beautiful artwork, but I don’t know this guy.

Well, based on Miller's appalling leftism, that's why I don't think I know him either, and he sure didn't give much reason to have faith in his ability to stand by his stories.

There’s a page in Elsewhen where you depict Wolverine brutally attacking Magneto. The backgrounds are bright red, his eyes are bright red, he’s in a murderous rage. Is this a new kind of ferocity for this character?

Well, it was always what we had in mind. There’s a scene, that I would never, in a million years, do. It’s Wolverine sitting at the breakfast table and Kitty Pryde [the youngest of the X-Men] comes in and says, “Hey,” in just the wrong tone of voice. And he guts her without a second thought and then goes on eating his Cheerios. Because he is quite literally a homicidal maniac.

Seriously, that's what he believes Logan should be?!? Strange. From what I'd read years ago, he wanted Wolvie to have a more likable persona, and this certainly is enough to wonder if Byrne's taking a contradictory position. He also makes it sound like he's taking the fictional-characters-are-real-life-people approach, which again, is utterly grating, illogical and brought down comicdom practically years ago.

And then, wouldn't you know it, an allusion to Byrne's leftism turns up:

It almost feels like we’re living in a comic book world today.

It feels like evil has won. I look at Washington and go, oh my God, this is the [guy] who I modeled my Lex Luthor in part on, back when he was just a big noise in business in New York.

Sigh. So he considers Trump a baddie and nothing else. A real shame. As though there weren't any better examples of bad billionaires out there at the time. On which note, as this Popverse article tells, if Byrne's take on Luthor was based on Trump, it was only partially, since there were other examples of billionaires at the time he'd drawn ideas from, including Ted Turner and Thomas Edison. But now, despite a suggestion to the contrary, Byrne sounds like he wants to claim Trump's literally the problem, and not the others. How odd. As a result, he's not all that different from Miller, so what's his point? At the end of the interview:

What do you consider your legacy?

When I look at my work, all I can see is the influences. There’s Neal Adams, there’s Joe Kubert, there’s Bernie Wrightson, there’s Jack Kirby, there’s Gil Kane. When people tell me they’re huge John Byrne fans, I go, “What are they seeing?”

I would like to think that when people see my work, it’s believable. If it’s two guys sitting at a bar, or if it’s two planets crashing into each other, I like to think that people will believe what they’re looking at. Just verisimilitude. There’s the word.

While there are several examples in his portfolio that're great, including his overall run on Fantastic Four, Byrne later stumbled by the turn of the century (his Spider-Man: Chapter One miniseries didn't get a good reception, IIRC), and I can't say he'll ever have as big a legacy as Kirby, Kane and Wrightson. Interesting that somebody who alluded to Kirby would've risked alienating him with a take on the aforementioned Barda from New Gods that was questionable at best, and ludicrous at worst. And Byrne's inability to avoid leftist political allusions will certainly for now make it difficult to decide how well his legacy can be admired overall.

Now again on the subject of Antos' recent attack on Byrne, what's really appalling is that she may have boosted sales for a story that I don't think should be considered a big deal, and alternate reality or not, it strikes me as tasteless. Interesting that she didn't attack Byrne because she cares about Jean, but rather, because she perceives his politics as incompatible with hers. That's got to be saying something. I don't like her MO, but even so, I'm not going to buy what Byrne's promoting as possibly his last writing and art project, because the whole premise was in questionable taste to start with, and became such an irritating cliche over the following decades. Even Colossus, if memory serves, was turned crooked in the early 90s, but he was never burdened with the kind of indignity Jean was when she was originally written obliterating citizens of an alien solar system, incurring the wrath of the Shiar. So why must Jean have suffered something that could make it difficult to use her as a character in later years? I know the setup was retconned with an alien lifeform disguising itself as Jean in 1985, but even so, that doesn't mean Claremont, Shooter, Byrne and company couldn't have created a new character in the mid-70s to take the role of the Phoenix instead of Jean being shoved into it. Now, we've since wound up with an embarrassing situation where the premise was repeatedly dredged up by bankrupt creators who can only think of emphasizing the darkness in the worst ways possible, and it's hurt comicdom very badly.

Marvel partners with USA Today for a Spider-Man project

Another of Marvel's pointless attempts to gain more publicity includes the following project at USA Today:

USA TODAY and Marvel Comics have partnered to provide USA TODAY’s PLAY digital entertainment hub with access to the most popular comic-book characters in the Marvel universe. PLAY will be the exclusive home for the new vertically formatted “Spider-Man TODAY” Infinity Comic series, which runs for 48 weeks beginning June 16 – with new issues dropping every Wednesday. Readers also will be able to dig into 1,000 curated archival Marvel comics ranging from old-school classics to modern favorites.

“USA TODAY is the largest news publisher in the country, and so that's always exciting,” says Marvel’s Spider-Man editor Nick Lowe. “And then you pair them with the greatest comic-book company in the world, Marvel Comics. I mean, that's chocolate and peanut butter, right? It's the best.”

Lowe sees “Spider-Man TODAY” as “the new incarnation of the Spider-Man funnies” by Spidey cocreator Stan Lee and artist John Romita Sr. that ran in newspapers starting back in the 1970s. “This is us trying to take up that baton and run the next part of the race.”

The new series features a “dream team” of artists Al Ewing (“Venom”) and Todd Nauck (“Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man”) bringing to life a story that “will span the entire Marvel universe and is good for fans of all ages,” Lowe says. [...]

Gee, when a left-wing ideologue like Ewing is involved, what's there to look forward to here? Even Lowe's not encouraging. That aside, why do they think a comic strip that wasn't as well written as the mainstay pamphlets is something to emulate? I seem to recall that, in the last few years before it ended, there was a very atrocious story where both Wolverine and Sabretooth turned up, with the latter incomprehensibly searching for the former, and was even willing to threaten Mary Jane Watson if that's what it took to get Spider-Man to reveal Logan's location (which he didn't know). Then Wolverine turned up and both he and Sabretooth knocked themselves out, and soon vanished again. That storyline, coming as it did near the official end of the original newspaper strip 7 years ago, was so insulting to the intellect, mainly because it didn't depict Spidey unleashing a gale of justified anguish at Sabretooth for threatening his wife. Why should this be just Wolvie's battle? That it was made to look almost absurdly comedic only worsened the tale. I couldn't bring myself to continue reading the newspaper strip after that, and besides, if the comics were already tainted by Joe Quesada, it only figures the newspaper strip was too.

So what's the use of turning out another comic strip that could be similar to ran during 1977-2019? Coupled with such awful writers and editors, that's why this is not something to care about, and could be worse than what the newspaper strip wound up being like. They also hint they've prepared comics, digital or otherwise, that're "modern", and that's another red flag they could be foisting some of the worst of the modern era on the readerships, stuff that could've come after Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's marriage was forcibly annulled. Also, I've never been very impressed with USA Today's overall news coverage, which is little different from J. Jonah Jameson's MO. One more reason it'd be better not to waste time and money on what they now have in store for Spidey. Marvel's done little more than make a business deal with a real life variation on the Daily Bugle.

A convention built on GI Joe in Augusta, Georgia

Fox54-WFXG gives a report about a comics convention in Augusta, Georgia built primarily on GI Joe fandom:

One of the biggest comic book conventions in the country came to Augusta this past weekend.

Joefest came back to Augusta for the ninth consecutive year. The convention is one of the biggest G.I. Joe conventions in the world and included a number of collector’s items, celebrity voice actors and comic book artists.

“This is my second year here, and we're having a blast with it,” vendor Jeff Mercado said. “I’m a big G.I. Joe fan anyway, so it made it easy to come. I have my own collection, so finding rare pieces that I want for my own collection, selling off some of my older stuff that I had from when I was a child, and then, I started getting into a lot of the other things. I try to just hit all the markets, you know, what everybody's into collecting, so I have a wide variety of stuff that we like to sell.”

Having a convention built on the Joes is great. But the trouble is, this is the kind of convention where collectibles are sold at huge prices:

The event included over 200 vendors serving over 15,000 people over three days. Vendor Jeff Mercado says that the collector’s items at the convention are worth thousands of dollars.

“I mean, we've got stuff here that's five bucks, 10 bucks, all the way up to a couple $1000 for a piece,” Mercado said. “I got some airplanes that go for 2,000 bucks. We got some tanks in here that range in the 100s, 200s. We cover a broad spectrum. There's all different kinds of collectors, so we try to have everything for every price point.”

Oh good grief. This sounds like another convention focused on selling to speculators, and that could even include those who buy toys for archiving in the vault. Indeed, what's the use of having old toys around if they're not going to be donated to museums anny more than old pamphlets are?

I think it's wonderful to establish a convention built around GI Joe as much as various other entertainment franchises. But that doesn't mean the speculator market should be mixed in with it, based on how high some of this stuff can sell, yet it's entirely possible it won't be played with or read, and end up locked in vaults till sold again at auctions. Indeed, toys can wind up being sold on auctions as much as Superman's most expensive back issues. And that makes the whole purpose of the toy industry look like a joke too.